We asked linguists if Donald Trump speaks like that on purpose

Donald Trump may do a good "drunk uncle at Thanksgiving" impersonation at his rallies, but amid all that rambling is a man who is actually precise about what he says, according to linguists.

Trump has made a habit of using hints and vague language to seemingly imply threats and evoke baseless conspiracy theories, giving a verbal nod to some of his supporters who are clued into what he's referencing. It's a smart move, this way of speaking, as it often prevents media outlets from calling him an outright liar or a conspiracy theorist.

Dog-whistling

For politicians, dog-whistling is the art of speaking in a sort of code that your supporters will understand, but not so blatantly that you feed too much ammunition to your detractors.

Trump's latest dive into dog-whistling came on Tuesday, when he implied "Second Amendment people" might have a way to stop Democratic rival Hillary Clinton and/or her Supreme Court justice nominees if she wins the White House.

"If she gets to pick her judges, nothing you can do, folks," Trump said. "Although the Second Amendment people, maybe there is, I don’t know."

Michael Silverstein, a University of Chicago professor who studies language structure and context, explains that Trump doesn't often use fluid syntax when he speaks, which allows his campaign to plausibly deny or spin his comments into a range of things in order to obscure Trump's meaning even further.

"Mr. Trump's style of delivery has long been a cross between stand-up comedy and the kind of thing one hears in neighborhood bars: no full sentences with clear assertions, but only a stream of phrases that point to particular things and circumstances, letting those who hear them understand what they mean," Silverstein wrote in an email to Mashable.

And sometimes he speaks in outright code.

I will be on @60Minutes tonight at 7:00 P.M. with Mike Pence talking about LAW AND ORDER and many other subjects! Bad times for divided USA!

As Politico wrote last month, Trump is reusing parts of the playbook of former President Richard Nixon. Nixon was the "law and order" candidate, just as Trump wants to be. And, then as now, "law and order" has a not-so-subtle racist undertone.

Whether or not Trump can be deemed respectable, the current Republican presidential nominee took a bullhorn to his "law and order" rhetoric after police officers were fatally shot in Texas and Louisiana last month.

Police officers throughout the country, though, just lived through one of safest years in the profession. And rates of violent crime throughout the country have plummeted since Nixon's day, though that doesn't mean Trump won't try to dial up fear among white Americans.

'Many people are saying'

Ever notice how Trump seems to have a lot of anonymous friends who endorse whatever he's saying?

He does the same with his oft-used phrase, "many people are saying."

Many people are saying that the Iranians killed the scientist who helped the U.S. because of Hillary Clinton's hacked emails.

Trump has used the phrase as a way to show he has support for whatever next comes out of his mouth. But he often avoids scrutiny around his sources, because media attention focuses on the the claims he makes rather than those who supposedly support his claims.

'I don't know'

Let's go back to Trump's Second Amendment comment. After he seems to hint that some of his supporters might be able to use force to stop Clinton from carrying out her duties as president, Trump casually says, "I don't know."

This phrase is often used to tone down a remark that can be seen as threatening or to avoid committing to what has been said. In Trump's case, he uses the phrase to back off whatever he just said after the idea is already planted.

"If you say, 'don't think of an elephant,' you'll think of an elephant," George Lakoff, a cognitive linguistics professor at the University of California, Berkeley, told Mashable.

Sarcasm

This, as a literal statement, is blatantly false. The best Trump could hope for is to push the idea that Obama and Clinton's foreign policy decisions led to the conditions that allowed ISIS to grow. Plenty of people would counter those arguments, but Trump could at least argue this point within the realm of reality.

Earlier this week, conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt suggested that Trump had not meant his comments literally, only to have Trump say, "No, I meant he's the founder of ISIS."

Trump also used the sarcasm excuse when he asked Russia to investigate Clinton's emails last month, essentially asking a foreign nation to become involved in America's domestic political affairs. "Of course I’m being sarcastic," he said at the time.

Sarcastic or not, just like when Trump uses "I don't know," he's already planted the thought.

Nicknames

Little Marco. Lyin' Ted. Crooked Hillary.

Trump has given nicknames to all his biggest rivals throughout the 2016 campaign, and with good reason.

"When he says 'crooked Hillary,' he's framing Hillary, and when he repeats it he strengthens the neural circuitry," Lakoff said. "It's just automatically going to be in peoples' heads."

Trump, in a variety of ways that he has made his own, can be a wordsmith. "The man has spent over 15 years as an unscrupulous salesman, a kind of con man," Lakoff said. "He knows how to do this instinctively."

Mashable
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